Better Get A Good IT Firm in 2011

If there is one thing you do for your company this year, you'd better get a good IT firm in 2011. Internet Security is getting tougher to handle.

That's why we wanted to do a little feature on IT Security and Trojan Virsuses for the start of the 2011 year. Hiding viruses inside email, images, Word Documents, has become a hot item again. Let’s take a look at one such story at the top of the headlines for 2011: the Karma Sutra Trojan.

The virus is hidden inside a download of a Power Point promising lessons on Kama Sutra positions. Instead, if you will pardon the pun, your computer ends up with the digital equivalent of a sexually transmitted disease. The “hook” to get you to download is an old one: sex. And this hook is highly important. In order to spread this virus well, you have to promise something highly desireable to the general public. One of the last trojans I found was buried in a download that was supposed to deliver and old copy of Camtasia Suites video editing software. Had I not had quality anti-virus software, it could have been ugly.

Users whose curiosities are so aroused that they download the sexual slideshow —titled “Real kamasutra.pps.exe” — are taken to an actual presentation, so for the moment, things seem to check out. But while they’re viewing the provocative pornographic pics, a backdoor Trojan called “Troj/Bckdr-RFM” is hard at work, automatically and inconspicuously planting malicious software on the victim’s system. Once a computer has been corrupted with the devious Trojan, hackers can gain remote access to it and steal the user’s identity, or even enlist the machine as part of a zombie army of infected computers used to launch mass denial-of-service attacks. This example points out the second most important thing needed make a good trojan virus: I call it the “all things look normal” trap. You have to keep things looking “normal” long enough for the virus to take effect.

Once you reach this point, you have hit the third strike: a good trojan virus will set itself in the root directory, System directories, etc., making it hard to get rid of. Many will require a complete reformating of your computer.

The secret is having good anti-virus software. One of my favorites can even be had for free. It is called Avast. Part of the secret of the software is it’s lack of popularity. Hackers typically start working on the big stuff first, looking for vulnerabilities in the software. Examples of this in the IT Security software world would be McAfee, or Norton.

Another defense tactic is to make sure you have a complete backup of your computer stored somewhere off the computer. In the event you have to reformat your computer, you’ll still have your data. In addition, you may want to look at created a virtual hard drive on your computer, that is kept secured. It can be set to not have access to all the key files on your real hard drive. Download your stuff to the virtual drive, and scan it prior to allowing it to live with your data on the C: drive.

If you would like to know more about providing quality security for your internet marketing websites, we would love to talk to you. Just pay us a visit at Zanity.com.au for more information.